In order to save the world from eternal night, Red must find a way to unlock the dormant power of the Sun Goddess running through her veins without killing herself and everyone she loves.
...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I jolted awake with a scream that wreathed my head in bubbles. Their spiralling path towards the surface was so long that I screamed again, yanking against the bonds of lapis lazuli holding me down at the bottom of the pool. The crystal shredded my skin, sending up a blinding cloud of blood that made the water taste like rust.
My power was waning. The fire in my heart was guttering down to embers, suffocating under the smothering weight of the water. I'm too far underground for the sun to save me, I realised with abject horror, and Rya wouldn't help me anyway.
I tried calling out to the Earth Mother instead, who'd helped me escape certain death in the past, but all I heard back was mocking laughter.
You brought my daughters home, She said, taking shape in the water by dispersing my blood just so. This time She was neither maiden nor crone, but a mother in Her prime, confident in her monopoly on wisdom. I have no further use for you.
My rage boiled the water when I realised it was the Earth Mother's glittering fingers digging into my flesh, piercing skin and puncturing bone. The pain was immeasurable, but I was familiar with the threshold of death and able to think through the fear, shoving back against Her psychic presence with the last of my strength.
The Earth Mother yielded a fraction, not expecting my resistance; She was startled to realise the bridge between our minds went two ways. I pressed the advantage, tasting Her jealousy and insecurity and arrogance as if it was my own, surprised to note how it had overflowed into Gretchen in previous days. Apparently I was tolerable when I was ugly, but as I regained my health the Earth Mother had become fixated on my radiant, otherworldly beauty, furious that it surpassed her own homely creations.
I recalled the tale of how Weavers came to be, after the Earth Mother's divine tapestries were trumped by a mortal girl's loom, and realised my gut instinct upon hearing it the first time was right. Our universe was inherently flawed, and so too were our deities; all three Goddesses had proven fickle with their favour, and they were ultimately undeserving of their monstrous power.
... must be controlled, the Earth Mother thought, concurrently with a thousand other thoughts. With one hand she drowned me, even while another gently guided new shoots through the top layer of soil on the mountainside. Life and death; two sides of the same coin, always spinning, just as likely to land on one as the other. I can live without the moon, but I cannot live without the sun...
"You need me!" I gasped, my words lost to the water. I started to choke, lungs twisting and contracting as they filled with fluid.
I was the only one left alive who could make contact with the Sun Goddess. The only one who could advocate for the Earth Mother's needs; the only one who could prevent all of her beloved creations from being destroyed —
